Autographs In The Rain Part 3

'Come on, love. He must have neighbours who look in on him, or a home help, or someone.'

'No, not him. He's a very private man. Always has been.'

He opened the car door. 'Let's bring some company into his life then.'

She smiled as she stepped out, and led him up the garden path. Glancingaround, Sammy noticed that the rose bushes in front of the house had gone to briar and that the beds in which they were planted were overdue for weeding. 'Old Uncle John's no gardener, from the look of it,' he muttered under his breath.

Although the short winter evening was almost over, no lights showed at the front door of the house, as Ruth pressed the doorbell. They waited, for almost a minute; eventually, Sammy patted her on the shoulder. 'You did call to tell him we were coming, didn't you?' he asked.

She looked up at him awkwardly. 'Well, no, I didn't. I wanted to give him a surprise.'

'Great! In that case, the old boy's probably still at the golf club.'

'No. He always listens to a football match on the radio on a Sat.u.r.day afternoon.'

'Ring the bell again, in that case. He's probably got the sound turned up.'

'Sammy, he's not in.' She stepped across to the uncurtained living room window and peered in. 'I can see his hi-fi set and it isn't switched on.'

'Maybe he's got another radio in the kitchen. Let's take a look round the back.'

As she looked at him, the first pang of fear shot through her. 'Okay,' she murmured, following him as he set off down the path which ran around the house. The small back garden lay to the east; the dusk, and the tall conifers which enclosed it on three sides, made it even gloomier than the front.

There was no light in any of the three windows to the rear, the kitchen, the second bedroom or the frosted pane of the bathroom.

'Does your uncle see all right?' Pye asked. 'I mean would he normally have the light on at this time of day?'

'Uncle John's always reading something or other. He wears gla.s.ses now, but his sight's always been fine. Sammy, let's go up to the golf club; the old so-and-so's probably there, right enough.'

He held up a hand. 'In a minute. First of all . . .' He reached out and turned the handle of the back door; it swung open, into the kitchen.

'G.o.d,' Ruth snapped. 'He's gone out and left the place unlocked!' She stepped past him into the kitchen, and gasped. Looking over her shoulder, Sammy could see even in the dim light that the place was in chaos; worse, it stank of staleness. Dirty plates filled the sink and were strewn on the work-surface beside the cooker. A badly soiled tea-towel lay in the middle12.AUTOGRAPHS IN THE RAIN.of the floor. A milk carton sat on the small table, surrounded by discarded food wrappers.

'What the h.e.l.l's the old b.u.g.g.e.r living like?' she murmured. 'He's always struck me as such a neat man, yet this is pure squalor. If this is what happens when I don't warn him of a visit, I'll be here every Sat.u.r.day from now on.'

She screwed up her face. 'Jesus, the place stinks!

'Uncle John!' she called out, listening for a few seconds before turning towards the back door. 'Come on. Let's go up there and find him.'

The young detective handed her the car keys. 'On you go. I'll make this place secure; the front door has a Yale so I'll come out that way.' She bought the lie and did as he told her, although to be sure he turned the back door key in its lock as soon as she had left.

The smell became more obvious as soon as he stepped out of the kitchen; it was thick, and cloying. He had done this job before, but nonetheless he was a shade fearful as he moved up the hall and opened the front bedroom door. Crumpled clothes were strewn all around, and the bed itself was unmade, its sheets so soiled and tangled that they might have won a place in a modern art exhibition. But the room was empty.

He had seen on the way past, through its open door, that the second bedroom had been untouched for weeks, either by duster or vacuum cleaner; so that left only the bathroom. Hesitantly, he opened the door. As he did so, the smell, strong before, seemed to wash out and over him like an ocean wave, almost knocking him backwards, physically. He knew, before he looked inside, what he would find.

Uncle John McConnell lay full length, submerged completely in his big enamelled bath. He had played his last round of golf, and listened to his last radio football commentary.

Even before stepping into the bathroom Pye had guessed that he had been dead for days, and he had feared that he would find him in a state of hideous decomposition. Instead, and to his surprise, the old man's body was more or less intact, if a strange waxy colour, and if one ignored the strips of what looked like skin, floating on the surface. He looked almost like a statue, carved out of soap.

The young sergeant reached across the small bathroom and opened the ventilation panel set in the window, then stepped back out into the hall and closed the door behind him.

There was a phone in the hall. He picked it up, but to his surprise, the line was dead. Instead, he took out his hand-phone and dialled the mainswitchboard of his Edinburgh k .

'Give me the Ops Room 'f headrters.The line rang only twice beCi't w ffiCer'' he asked telephonist, speakmg,' said a deep, North (tm)" answered. 'Operations. ACC Chase h.e.l.lo sir; said they voice How iMr Martin's office. I didn't (tm) T 'This is (tm) Spot check, Sergeant, spot check T " n a Sat.u.r.day'Your secretary, sir Ruth M nJohr.only when we got here,toTdT (tm) to (tm)' her Uncle Where's c.u.mbernauld?' ChaseT,?aP WaS dead'In his bath.'

'Between Stirling and Glaspdon't have their Ops number to LIT'" ' " " Strathclyde area, but I Okay, Pye, I'll turn them omf

'To be on the safe side, yes u d yU d? CID?'

Like I said, the old chap seems to hte f deSn'1 lok suspicious at all.

'" the water- was alone in tL hou SOrt f (tm)e and died, have to have police here, as we HasZ" ?"?' S "nder Scots law I m familiar with the law , dCton

address,"'" "n,' said Chase, heavily. -Wha.'s "he Fifteen Glenlaverock Grove ' F'Yes, sir, she is. She doesn- 0"(tm)" " -x.of-kin,w TS ye'' """"S". '. She's out Well, you better bloodv tell hemergency services descend mobndedr3"11'1""' before the local14.Bob Skinner laughed. The one place I can't be contacted, Neil, as you well know, is on Gullane Hill with my clubs over my shoulder. If I took my mobile out on the golf course with me, I'd soon run out of playing partners.

'I'm sorry they interrupted your Sat.u.r.day though. I didn't really expect that.'

'No problem, Boss. My daughter was just about to bully me into doing the ironing.'

'Has she not taken that over yet?'

'No, she says she's too small to reach the ironing board properly. She also says that she doesn't expect to be tall enough till she's about eighteen.

She's more like her mother every day, I tell you.'

'You don't have to, mate. I've seen her in action.' He smiled briefly at the thought. 'Anyway, what did this boy from the Met have to tell me?'

Mcllhenney drew a breath. 'Nothing you're going to like.' He outlined the content of Crowther's call, omitting nothing. When he finished there was silence from the other end of the line.

Skinner broke it at last. 'The b.a.s.t.a.r.d must have fired a blank,' he said, firmly. 'There was a gun, Neil, and it was fired. Believe me?'

'I never doubted you for one second, Boss,' his executive a.s.sistant replied.

'It's just a pity there weren't any witnesses.'

He heard the Deputy Chief Constable sigh. 'Aye, well, that's not exactly the case. The fact is, there was someone with me when it happened.'

'Why didn't you say so, then?' Mcllhenney blurted out.

'Discretion, pal. Discretion. Does the name Louise Bankier mean anything to you?'

'Louise Bankier? The actress? The movie star?'

'The very same. Lou was there; she and I had just had dinner in a restaurant in Soho. We were looking for a taxi when the car drove by and the guy took his pop at me. For all sorts of reasons, I didn't want her aboutwhen the Met boys arrived, so I stuck her in a taxi and sent her home as soon as I'd called the thing in.'

'Boss, what the h.e.l.l. . .'

Skinner laughed again, softly, at his friend's incredulity,'... was I doing up the West End with Louise Bankier? She and I go back a long way ... a very long way.

'She was just starting at Glasgow University when I was in my final year; she was seventeen and I was twenty-one. We met at the Fresher's Fair when I was signing up new members for the squash club. She joined, and fortunately for the world, she also joined the drama club on the same day.

'She could play squash eff all, but when it came to the acting game . . .

She wound up w.a.n.gling a transfer to the Athenaeum - that was what they called the drama school in Glasgow - after her first year, and she's never looked back from there.

'I hadn't seen her in twenty-five years. I followed her career, of course, and went to all her movies, but I lost touch with her completely. Then last Thursday, I got a message at my hotel. There was a piece in the Evening Standard about last week's world terrorism conference. She saw it and phoned the organisers; they told her where I was stopping.